Items tagged with touchpad

We’ve all grown accustomed to the use of TouchPads on notebook computers, and many of you have no doubt used a separate fingerprint scanner (usually embedded in the keyboard deck) on more business-oriented laptops. Well, Synaptics is looking to combine the two technologies with the announcement of its SecurePad solution. Notebooks will no longer need to feature two separate hardware interfaces, so Synaptics sees this as both a convenience perk for consumers and a cost savings measure for OEMs. In other words, it’s a win-win solution with little (if any downsides) for all parties involved. The SecurePad...Read more...

We recently had the opportunity to chat with Synaptics and get some hands-on time with an array of already-available and upcoming input technologies. The big announcement coming from Synaptics today is that the company’s ForcePad has been selected for the User Interface Software & Technology (UIST) Student Innovation Contest, which will take place in October in Cambridge, Massachusetts. UIST is a forum for innovations in the software and technology of human-computer interfaces, which is sponsored by ACM's (Association for Computing Machinery) special interest groups on computer-human...Read more...

HP CEO Meg Whitman is expected to announce a major shift in its business structure today. Henceforth, the Personal Systems Group (PSG), which includes consumer PC sales, and the Image and Printing Group (IPG) will be combined into a single business structure. The move is a curious one, given that it combines what's typically been one of HP's star earners (IPG) with the low-margin / huge volume PC group. As part of the deal, longtime HP executive Vyomesh Joshi is expected to seek more time with his family; the combined unit will be headed by HP vice president Todd Bradley. When HP announced its...Read more...

IDC suggests that worldwide tablet sales have skyrocketed over the past 12 months, up 264.5 percent in Q3 2011 as compared to the same period in 2010. Q3 results, strong as they were, didn't quite match up to the analyst firm's projections, but yearly sales are expected to hit 63.3 million units. Apple continues to dominate the market, with an estimated 11.1M iPads shipped in Q3. The company's market share is estimated at 61.5 percent—a two percent decline from Q2. HP's TouchPad sold remarkably well through this period, as did the Nook Color. Note that since these figures are from Q3,...Read more...

All hail the TouchPad, the second most popular tablet in the universe! Wait, what? Believe it or not (and we wouldn't blame you if you didn't), Hewlett-Packard has sold more tablets so far in 2011 than any other company, save for Apple, according to market research firm The NPD Group. Of course, HP unintentionally 'cheated' to get there by discontinuing its TouchPad and selling off remaining inventory in a $99 (16GB) and $149 (32GB) fire sale, but the fact that HP killed off its webOS hardware division only makes this all the more remarkable. "If you look at the tablet market without Apple there...Read more...

Turns out there's more than just the ways we mentioned earlier this week to get a cheap TouchPad. Yes, the webOS tablet that barely was. It's still hanging around, in one way or another, and there seems to be yet another option for grabbing one. In fact, it's becoming the zombie tablet. It's dead, and so it's webOS, but they just... won't... die! Not that we're complaining! Now, the TouchPad Device Purchase Program is returning for a limited time. Registered developers in the US, Canada, and Europe will be able to purchase up to two TouchPads at a discount while supplies last. The company is discontinuing...Read more...

Hewlett Packard created a lot of interest for its cancelled TouchPad tablet when it slashed the price to $99 for the 16GB model and $149 for the 32GB model, and it didn't take long for the OEM and its retail partners to run out of stock. That's old news. But did you know you can still buy a discounted TouchPad? You have two options for picking up a TouchPad on the cheap, and both come with caveats (and one with a time limit). Your first option is to head over to BestBuy.com and shop a bundle deal. Best Buy currently has stock of an untold number of 32GB TouchPad models, and the electronics chain...Read more...

Welp, looks like this is the end of the line. For real this time. HP's TouchPad has been a tough item to get in recent months -- right after that price drop from $499 to $99. We suspected that all stock was already depleted, but evidently a few remain. But now there's a catch to getting one. HP and Best Buy have announced that starting on November 1st, the TouchPad can be purchased for $149.99 with the purchase of an HP or Compaq Laptop, Desktop or All-in-One computer. Customers can take advantage of this deal online at BestBuy.com, and at all Best Buy and Best Buy Mobile standalone stores nationwide....Read more...

Remember the HP TouchPad? That was arguably the last webOS consumer product to ever go out, neck-and-neck with the Pre 3 in select markets. HP decided to toss those on a fire sale in order to clear inventory, and now the company's just hoping we all forget that webOS ever existed. Or are they? In a move that could have only come directly from left field, HP has announced on their official blog that webOS 3.0.4 is now being pushed out to TouchPad devices. That's right: a software update for a deceased product. Things like this happen from time to time, but it's particularly strange on a product...Read more...

Logitech introduced the Logitech Wireless Touchpad which brings multi-touch navigation and gesture-based controls to your computer. The Wireless Touchpad features a large 5-inch touch surface and utilizes a Logitech Unifying receiver. While surfing the web using the Wireless Touchpad, you'll be able to point, scroll, and swipe using your finger. The Wireless Touchpad multi-touch navigation offers up to four-finger gestures and swipes to scroll pages, jump tabs, and switch applications. The Logitech Wireless Touchpad is expected to be available in the U.S. and Europe this month for about $50....Read more...

Over the course of the past few weeks, since the company’s announcement that it would no longer produce tablets and smartphones based on webOS and that it planned to spin-off its PC business, HP has been the target of a lot of negative sentiment. HP claims, however, that much of the information it tried to convey has been misunderstood. In attempt to set the record straight, the company just posted up an article on its Small and Medium Business website titled, “HP's bold new direction. The facts.” In the article, HP tries to better explain its plans for webOS, its PC...Read more...

It turns out all you need to do to dethrone Apple's iPad is launch a $500 tablet with modern hardware, discontinue the device, and mark it down to $99 (or $149 for the 32GB version). Hewlett Packard did exactly that and now owns the hottest selling tablet on the market, only the OEM failed to anticipate such rapid demand for a prematurely defunct device. Finding a marked down TouchPad at this point in the game is mostly an exercise in futility, and those who've been waiting for HP to receive a final shipment from one of its warehouses have been wearing out their F5 keys. Well, we have some good...Read more...

HP dropped a bombshell on consumers with last week's TouchPad $99 firesale, and now the company is going to sweeten the deal by giving away six free apps for the tablet. The TouchPad has certainly gained some popularity after being snatched up everywhere by deal-hungry consumers, having sold out at many locations causing HP to send out more shipments of the device. Now, it seems that HP wants to generate some good-will from those sales by offering six free apps to TouchPad owners that normally sell for as much as $14.99. The six free apps are: Glimpse (Inglorious Apps, $5,...Read more...

Over the last couple of weeks, since HP announced its will no longer manufacture devices using WebOS and the ensuing fire-sale of HP TouchPads, there has been much talk about porting Android over to the TouchPad to breathe some new life into an otherwise pretty nice piece of hardware. There are already a couple of projects underway and some sizable bounties available for the first developer (or team of devs) that port Android over to the TouchPad. The goal is to first port Gingerbread, i.e. Android 2.3, to the TouchPad and to then start working on Honeycomb (v3.0), which is the first...Read more...